Around the Grinder – November 2017

Around the Grinder – November 2017

What has been going on in the shop this past months?

It has been a crazy few months at KHDaily Knives. I feel badly that these blogs were one of the things that just had to get cut out with all that was going on. Hopefully, I can keep up with it going forward.

The biggest thing that happened was my father-in-law Ed died in June, which was a huge blow to all of our family. It is never easy to lose someone that you love so much and he will be greatly missed. We celebrated his life up in Door County, Wisconsin, which was one of his favorite places on earth. It is beautiful up there and we stayed in a cabin that was super cool.

While we were there, we surprised Sidney (Ed’s wife), Courtney (my wife), and Ashley (Courtney’s sister) with knives that had sentimental memories to Ed. The whole family loves to cook, so these knives were a cool way of remembering him when they use them. Two of the knives were 8” Chef knives and the third was a 6” Chefs knife. All three knives had similar handle scales. They were coffee sack burlap that went along with Ed’s love of coffee. The coffee grinder waking us up for the morning pot of coffee was waking one of the first memories I had at Ed’s house.

Blade Magazine Knife Show:

KHDaily Knives will have a table at the Blade Magazine knife show in Atlanta, Georgia June 1st-3rd 2018! I am super excited about this and am excited to see where this hobby business of mine could go. I am also eager to get some feedback from some other knife makers who I am friends with there, as well as visiting with all sorts of people in “The PIT”!! Once I know what my table number will be, I will put out a blog article, in addition to announcing it on social media.

In the shop, I have been trying to keep up with the orders I had received over the summer. There are some truly awesome knives coming out of the shop right now. Looking back at some of my first knives, it is amazing how far I have come in just a few years.

I started making some of drawing my knife profiles in AutoCAD for them to eventually be water jet cut. This will save me a TON of time as well as ensure all the knives start off the same size.

What’s Happening on Knives?

Over the last few months there have been some true gems coming out of the shop. They have spanned the size range from large kitchen knives down to the pocket bushcrafter.

Two of the knives went for a trade with a “Bid Deal” knife maker Todd Hunt. Todd has been a great mentor to me, and he and I have shared a ton of ideas and ways to do things with each other. I am always amazed with his willingness to meet up and visit! I made him and his wife a 8” chef’s knife and a 6” boning knife. Both had filework and some really cool coffee sack burlap handle scales. I am excited to see his knife for me finished! It is going to be awesome!!

One of my friends from high school contacted me about making a couple of knives for him too. I always love it when I know the people my knives are going to. They are both knives I have not made a ton of to date, but are both designs I love! The knives are a Nakiri and boning knife.

New Knife Making Equipment

It is an exciting time at KHDaily Knives. I have been lucky enough to be able to test-drive a piece of equipment that I have been thinking about buying for a long time. One of my friends let me use his rotary platen for a while. This is one of the pieces of equipment I have been drooling over for a really long time. My first impressions on it are that it is very well-built. I ended up talking to Dylan Fletcher of Fletcher Knives about how he uses his. I was grinding way too far up the blade when I was rough grinding with the flat platen before I switched over to the rotary. On my next batch I might try switching over to it.

Even though I can think of a bunch of eventual uses for the rotary platen, I decided a disk grinder was a better purchase for the shop right now. I decided to purchase a 1 HP three phase electric motor, a new KBDA-24D VFD, and the Nielsen interchangeable disk system. I have posted some of the build on Instagram and hopefully everything will be delivered soon. I had to do some wiring on to accommodate another 220V piece of equipment, but it went smoothly.

Goals for This Month

The goal for next month is to finish the 10 knives I have already ground blades for. I am trying to build up an inventory of knives for the Blade Magazine knife show. Quite a few of the knives I am in the process of making are already spoken for. I would like to at least have a few to set aside for the show.

Get all 10 knives currently in-progress done

Finalize water jet drawings and get knife blanks water jet cut

Summary

I am going to hopefully be in a more normal schedule for the next few months for working on knives. I have some vacation days coming up at work and want to maximize the days I have off to work on knives and get ahead on my workload for Blade. Thank you all for your support on Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Etcetera! It means more than you could think it does!